Didn't Argentina almost not make the world cup?...
- Thread starter dawgstudent
- Start date
they were behind brazil, paraguay, and i think chile. the last team was uruguay because they had to play costa rica (4th place, n. america) for a spot.
i think s. america does a round robin where all teams play home and aways with all other teams, so that's a lot of games for qualifiers. i'm not sure how it is in argentina for sure, but i'd suspect that a lot of players were still playing for their club teams in europe during a good bit of the qualifiers. in qualifiers you can see teams like peru beating brazil and that should never happen. makes me feel like it's when baseball players go on strike and they call a bunch of minor leaguers up
i think s. america does a round robin where all teams play home and aways with all other teams, so that's a lot of games for qualifiers. i'm not sure how it is in argentina for sure, but i'd suspect that a lot of players were still playing for their club teams in europe during a good bit of the qualifiers. in qualifiers you can see teams like peru beating brazil and that should never happen. makes me feel like it's when baseball players go on strike and they call a bunch of minor leaguers up
Qualifying in South America is a double round robin among all 9 countries that over 2 years (9 games each year). But nobody was playing with their club teams during qualifying. FIFA sets certain dates for qualifying matches (and a few friendlies), and all club teams worldwide take those dates off. You do see MLS teams continue to play during the summer tournaments, but that's because for every other nation in the world the summer is the offseason and you can't just shut the whole MLS down for 2 weeks to a month for an International tournament.